16 pages • 32 minutes read

Sad Steps

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

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Summary

Poem Analysis

Background

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

The poem comprises seven tercets (three-line stanzas). The length of the lines slightly vary. Thirteen of the lines are pentameters, meaning they contain five poetic feet. The basic rhythm is iambic: An iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Line 5, for example is a pentameter: “Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky,” although it is not entirely an iambic line, since the final foot, “wind-picked sky” is a spondee, meaning that the line ends in two stressed syllables (both “picked” and “sky” are stressed). Line 7, “The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow,” is also mostly iambic pentameter, but in the third foot, “dashes,” the expected stress pattern is reversed to form a trochee: a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. The following line, Line 8, is also an iambic pentameter with one substitution: Again, a trochee subs for an iamb. This time the substitution occurs at the beginning of the line, in the first foot: “Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart.” Line 15, “Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare” ends with a spondee, which gives extra emphasis to the perceived impersonal expression of the moon.

Rhyme

The poem has an intricate rhyme scheme. In the first tercet, Line 1 rhymes with Line 3. In the second tercet, Line 4 rhymes with Line 5. The two tercets are also linked in the rhyme scheme, since the end of Line 1 (“piss”) rhymes with the end of Line 6 (“this”). The rhymes can be represented as ABA BBA.

The following two tercets have the same rhyme scheme as the first two. They are also linked together by rhyme, with Line 7 (“blow”) rhyming with Line 12 (No!”). The rhyme pattern can be represented as CDC DDC.

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The final two tercets rhyme in the same way as the previous four, which can be represented as EFE (that is, Line 13 rhymes with Line 15) and FFE (Line 16 rhymes with Line 17). Once again, these tercets are linked by rhyme, since Line 13 (“there”) rhymes with Line 18 (“somewhere”). The linking of three groups of two tercets by rhyme in effect creates a poem of three sestets: a six-lined stanza. Thus, the full pattern of rhyme can be represented as ABA BBA CDC DDC EFE FFE.

In a few cases, Larkin employs what is known as imperfect or slant rhyme. For example, in Lines 1 and 3, the vowel sounds in “piss” and the last syllable of “cleanliness,” the consonants are the same but the vowel sounds are different. The same is true of “separate” and “art” (Lines 10 and 11).

Enjambment

The poem utilizes enjambment: the running over of one line to the next without the use of end stop punctuation. The reader must continue to the next line to find the sense or meaning of the line in full. “I part thick curtains and am startled by / The rapid clouds” (Lines 2-3) is an example. “The plain / Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare (Lines 14-15) is another. When the grammatical sense of a phrase or sentence is completed at the end of a line, that line is known as end-stopped. Line 13 provides an example: “One shivers slightly, looking up there.”

Caesura

A caesura is a pause indicated by a comma, semi-colon, colon, period, or other form of punctuation within a line of poetry. The caesura has the effect of varying the rhythm, creating variety, and slowing down the line. In this poem, eight lines—nearly half the poem—contain a caesura. The caesura usually occurs around the middle of the line, as in “The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness” (Line 3) and “Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky” (Line 5).

The fourth tercet in which the poet makes fun of the traditional ways people have characterized the moon, contains no less than four emphatic caesuras (exclamation marks) in the space of two lines: “Lozenge of love! Medallion of art! / O wolves of memory! Immensements! No” (Lines 11-12).